The Political Junkie offers an outside-looking- in view of the US. Each day, we will highlight news and opinion pieces from around the world that are focused on US politics and policy. Agree or disagree with the opinions you will read but take a few minutes to see yourselves as others see you.

Pages

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Romney's jobs, jobs and more jobs--taking credit for Obama's recovery

Washington Post

Romney’s facts are curious things

By Dana Milbank

Top Romney economist Glenn Hubbard acknowledged to Kessler that the
three studies did “not make up the 12 million jobs in the first four
years,” and the Romney campaign issued a statement minutes before the
debate that expanded the jobs time frame to “the next four years and
beyond.”

But the claim, though discredited, had become a key part
of Romney’s message — and he went right ahead and repeated the
falsehood during the debate.

Much of the burgeoning fact-check
function in the news media is subjective; Romney’s tax cut claims, for
example, are impossible to assess with certainty because he doesn’t say
what deductions he would disallow and what other assumptions he makes.
But the jobs claim is black and white: The evidence the Romney campaign
furnished to support the claim did not do so.

Romney’s economists do think the economy would add 12 million jobs under his policies over the next four years, and they issued a white paper
in August claiming that. But this paper is not based on Romney’s
five-point plan, and elements of that plan, such as cracking down on
China and consolidating job training, aren’t even mentioned in the
paper. Rather, the 12 million figure is based on the economists’
assumptions that Romney’s policies would mean that “the current recovery
will align with the average gains of similar past recoveries.”